


up in lights

by mcmeekin



Category: Power Rangers, Power Rangers Turbo, Power Rangers in Space
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 02:50:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8384371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcmeekin/pseuds/mcmeekin
Summary: Cassie struggles to redefine herself post-rangerhood and newly famous.
But the war never quite gets out of her bloodstream.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kathillards](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathillards/gifts).



> happy freaking birthday pearl i tried writing this for your last birthday and failed so. this story has been a year and a half in the making and it has been many things over that year and a half but it has never been chronological and it was never meant to be so if you get lost don't worry i'm lost too. but the original plan was to write a cassie fic about taylor swift's "the lucky one" and this fic...is not that.......i don't think...but the title stuck around so

The war never quite gets out of her bloodstream.

 

Some may argue it wasn’t a war. A series of isolate battles does not a war make. But what else is she supposed to call something that was so all consuming, so terrifying, so exhilarating? She can’t remember most of her senior year at school, conversations with her parents on the phone, or really anything that wasn’t related to being a ranger. She doesn’t apply to a single college. She forgets to write down song ideas. She can hardly name a friend she has outside of her team.

And bad habits die hard.

 

Nobody would ever look at Cassie Chan and guess that she came from wealth. The tattered jeans she bought at a garage sale and ripped up herself, a crop top she hot glued fake jewels onto haphazardly, sneakers she’s worn since eighth grade, and hair in several pigtails she may or may not have slept in were all misleading. She understands this fact. So well, in fact, that she glues a couple of sequins onto her jeans for good measure.

It isn’t that she doesn’t want to be known for her parents’ money (flaunting wealth is useful in numerous cases); it’s just that she doesn’t want to attract other rich people to herself. She doesn’t like rich people. So maybe there’s an irony to be found in her career path settling her nicely among approximately every rich person ever.

At least that’s how she feels, sometimes.

But at least she’s familiar with them. Knows how their words twist. Knows how to play them.

She grew up around them, listened to conversations at that age grownups forget children have, when they’re old enough to understand but smart enough to shut up.

They used to bend down and ask her, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

“A musician,” she would answer easily, and they would all laugh lightly. Every time she sound-checks, she wonders if they’re still laughing somewhere.

 

Being famous wasn’t exactly a part of the “be a musician” plan. Not that she was ever particularly opposed, it just didn’t seem likely. She definitely never thought it would happen like this.

They’re famous overnight. The day it ends, they’re all so shocked and numb and ambivalent that she doesn’t really register the camera and microphones and reporters shoving in her face until TJ, beautiful TJ, steps forward and gets their attention. She thinks that he makes it clear that they don’t want to be questioned right now, just left to recover and process and heal, because they sort of back off after that.

They’re flying back from KO-35 when they decide that they can’t talk about it. They already broke one of the three rules, _Zordon’s_ rules. Talking more to the media about it just feels like an insult to his memory. So they leave their morphers on the ship and never talk to the media about power rangers-related things.

Sure, they’re always celebrities. They do charity work, they get photographed, they sign autographs. But they don’t talk to the media.

That doesn’t stop the media from talking about them, though.

Lots of words, lots of things, lose their meanings after being a ranger. Lucky is one of those words. One of the newscasters’ favorite. She’s _lucky_ to have made it out of the final battle alive. She’s _lucky_ to have been chosen. Lucky to be pretty, lucky to be smart, lucky to be talented. She doesn’t understand what any of it means anymore.

Cassie is forced quite suddenly into a different spotlight, after her first single hits it big. Apparently being popular on the radio means she actually _has to_ talk to the media.

Her first interview is a talk-show, of all things, and the host smiles too brightly. They stay mostly on the topic of music and other projects she’s been doing. Near the end, he slips in the magic words.

“Now the Angel Grove Children’s Shelter, that’s a project you’ve been involved with a long time, correct?” His tone matches his smile.

She tries to remain relaxed. The shelter is too close a topic to Justin, and they’ve all been trying so hard to keep him out of this whole mess. Volunteering and supporting the shelter has been an innocent way to hang out with him without raising any red flags. She nods, smiling her fake smile. “Yeah, I’ve been involved since I first moved to Angel Grove. It’s a great program all around for children of all needs.”

“How did you get involved?”

She shifts.  “My friends in Angel Grove were involved so I got interested that way.”

“You mean your fellow power rangers.” It’s not a question so she doesn’t answer it, deigning instead to smile and shrug one shoulder.

He raises his hands in mock surrender, and the audience laughs lightly. “You can’t blame a man for trying.” More laughs. “You people have been elusive and vague ever since you _won_  that final battle.”

In her mind’s eye, she sees a flash of blond hair, sees a lost boy press a morpher into her hand, sees her bus leaving without her, and the Turbo Megazord failing. “The power rangers didn’t win,” she finds herself saying. “We just kept surviving until everyone else lost.”

The interviewer looks like he’s struck gold that he can't spend, and she knows their interview time must be running short. He can't twist the details out like he wants to.

“Well, Cassie Chan, one can only hope you keep surviving, and we hear much more music from you in the future. One last questions before we release you,” he jokes. She laughs to make him feel better. “Your debut album, out at the end of the month, is called ‘Who I Am,’ so of course my question is, who are you, Cassie Chan?” He has a wry smile and a twinkle in his eye.

Like instant replay, she sees Kat’s broken look, sees Adam haunted by Carlos’s mistake, sees Justin waving goodbye. _The luckiest of them all_ , her mind whispers.

She tosses back another laugh, leans closer to him, and says, sensually, “I guess you’ll have to listen and find out.”

 

Ashley looks like a rich person, she decides as she stands next to her best friend on a red carpet, cameras blurring their vision and smiles too tight to be comfortable.

She’s not even sure how she and Ashley became friends. Ashley is so… _opposite_ of everything she ever wanted to be, so like the girls Cassie used to scoff at as she passed them in the hallway or at a fundraiser her parents were throwing. Ashley’s a _cheerleader_ , for crying out loud. Some days she’s not sure how she found it in her to respect someone like her.

But then there are days like the day Ashley tricked her way out of Astronema’s trap. Like the day Ashley barked at the boy making Cassie uncomfortable without question, without hesitation. Like, the day Karone defected, when Dark Spectre showed up on their screen, in their home, and Ashley stared him down and mouthed off to him, not a trace of fear coloring her.

How can Cassie do anything but respect a woman who would kick, scream, snarl, and humiliate anyone who dared to defy her?

That’s what she thinks about as she watches Ashley’s perfect camera smile.

 

Ashley’s dad files for divorce on the day of her graduation.

 

The first time Cassie goes over to Ashley’s house, they get attacked on the way there.

It’s a small Piranhatron scuffle, not one that requires a morpher. Ashley chips a nail and grazes her face while fighting. When they get to her house, Ashley’s mother brushes away the dirt while Ashley smoothly lies about a fight at school.

_Girls are not meant to fight dirty_ , Ashley’s mother sings as she goes to get them after-school snacks, a laugh in her tone that doesn’t match the rest of her face.

Ashley’s lips twist upward in an expression that doesn’t match the rest of her face.

 

The last time she goes over to Ashley’s house, before Ashley officially moves out, she can’t stop looking over her shoulder. It’s been about a month since the end, and she swears she sees glimpses of him in shop windows, around corners, in crowds, in her dreams. She’s worried about him. Worried he didn’t make it out at all. But she tries to keep from dwelling on it.

Ashley’s mother doesn’t greet them as they shuffle in. Of course none of them had told their parents before they told the world, which made for a lot of awkwardness on many fronts. Cassie is glad her parents live too far away and have jobs too important to get away from to have harassed her very much. So she and Ashley go upstairs silently. They’re supposed to be packing up the last of Ashley’s stuff, but it ends up with Ashley sitting on the floor folding clothes, and Cassie laying on the bed half listening to the radio.

They’ve been silent for a while, but questions itch at Cassie’s throat. “Do you think your parents ever loved each other?” Cassie asks the ceiling.

“Depends. Define ‘love.’” Ashley’s tone is frank, critical.

Cassie hesitates, wondering if she’s qualified to answer that sort of question. “I don’t know,” she decides.

Ashley laughs harshly. “I don’t they think knew either.”

Cassie swallows. “Is your mom really going to sell the house?”

She hears clothes hit the bottom of a box, maybe a little too viciously. “I don’t know. I don’t care. It’s hasn’t been home for a while.”

She must miss the Megaship as much, if not more, than Cassie. Cassie can’t quite decide if it’s the ship she misses or the feeling of having a place to belong. Or maybe the feeling of purpose. Or maybe she just misses being a ranger.

“You know how soldiers come back from war and have trouble adjusting back to normal life?” she asks suddenly, tentatively, quietly.

Ashley’s quiet for a moment. Then, “If you’re about to ask if I think we’re anything like that, I would say that the life we returned to was anything except normal.”

Ashley stands and unplugs the radio, probably meaning to pack it up as well. But then she feels more than sees Ashley lie down on the bed next to her and heave out a sigh. “You know, I keep expecting the stars to look different. I thought they would, after seeing them up close.”

Cassie looks over at her. “The stars aren’t the ones that changed.”

Ashley nods, her eyes fixed on the ceiling.

The silence that follows feels a little like the silence in space to her, which is comforting. She wonders if there’s anything better than lying with her best friend in silence, perfect silence, while the rest of the world screams for their attention.

“TJ asked me something yesterday,” Ashley says suddenly, almost jarring Cassie out of her peace.

“Yeah?” she prompts.

Ashley pauses. Swallows. Shifts. “I don’t think the Phantom is coming back, Cassie.”

She’s not entirely sure how to respond to that, so maybe what she says is a little quick, a little harsh. “That wasn’t TJ’s question.”

“No…” Ashley shifts again, this time turning onto her side so she can look right at Cassie. Cassie doesn’t look back. “Did you love him?”

There’s a spiral crack in Ashley’s ceiling. Soon to be former ceiling. What’s the past tense for something that’s not quite over yet? “Which 'him' did he ask about?”

“Does it matter?”

“No, it doesn’t matter,” Cassie agrees. She sits up then, reaching for the pictures sitting on Ashley’s bedside table. Most of them are Ashley and the cheerleaders. The one in front is of Ashley and Carlos. “The answer might be both, but it might be neither.” She picks up Carlos’s picture and looks over at Ashley. “Which box do you want these in?”

Neither of them want to have the rest of the conversation, so they put the pictures in the bottom of the clothing box.

It’s years later, and she’s sitting at the bar at the tail end of Andros and Ashley’s wedding reception, watching Zhane nurse a glass of water. She pats his back reassuringly, sympathetic to his plight of just having lost a drinking competition with some other team’s sixth. She hadn’t been paying enough attention to know which team it was or who the sixth was or even how she was supposed to have tangentially known him according to the media.

The bride and groom have already been swept away on their honeymoon (Cassie had jokingly suggested they actually go to the moon; Andros had told her they could go there any time they liked so why would they waste their honeymoon on a trip there? Word play was lost on aliens more often than she’d like), leaving the partygoers to slowly stagger off into the night. The music was still pounding and probably would for a few more moments. Enough for her to force Zhane to finish the water, at least.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been in love,” she tells him over the bass line. Later, she’ll blame this statement on the three drinks she had or how pathetic Zhane looked or the atmosphere of being single at her best friend’s wedding. But now, it seems like the right thing to say.

He looks at her sideways, gauging how to react to this. His trademark shit-eating grin spreads across his face as he asks, “Not even with me?”

She rolls her eyes and shoves him. “I’m being serious! Andros and Ashley have it all figured out, and here I sit. Sweet sixteen and never been kissed.”

He fixes her with a confused, drunken look. “Neither of those things are true.”

“It’s an _expression_!” She frowns. “I think.” She shakes her head as if this will clear away the confusion and get her back on topic. “What about you?”

“What about me what?”

“Have _you_ ever been in love?” She accidentally says it too loudly, as the music chooses to cut off at that moment.

His grin falters briefly. “I think you people use ‘love’ differently than Kernovians. I often don’t know what you mean by it.”

She huffs in frustration. “I mean, like, I know you love Andros, but are you _in love_ with him?” As the words are rolling off her tongue, she half-realizes that this might have been the question she was setting up for all along. Sitting here single at her best friend’s wedding, looking at her best friend’s husband’s best friend, who is also sitting here single at _his_ best friend’s wedding. What an odd pair they are.

His smile crinkles his eyes. Crushes them. “Maybe. Like I said, I really have no idea what you mean by that.” He looks at her sideways, drinking the last bit of water like a shot. “Are you in love with Ashely?”

She doesn’t smile back. “Maybe. I really have no idea what I mean by that.”

 

She tries not to think of the girls who held her morphers before she did. She can’t help it, though. Every time she lifted her key she couldn’t help but wonder about Kat and Kim. And whoever had come before Kim thousands of years ago. A legacy held in her hand.

Now, every time she presses the buttons she wonders about a different planet’s legacy. How many people pressed the same buttons? How many people wore this particular pink before her?

Andros never says what happened to the people who came directly before them. Presumably his former teammates. He never says, but they all guess. It’s not discussed, not mentioned, not breathed, and barely thought, but they’re almost definitely all dead.

Cassie’s not sure how she lives with that, but she does.

 

Kendrix dies for her. She screams.

 

She and Karone have a lot of conversations without saying anything at all.

Cassie’s head tilts. _What was it like, wearing a dead girl’s uniform? Sleeping in the bed of a girl who was murdered? Was it anything like our first night on the Megaship?_

Karone’s eyes flash. _No. But it was a lot like my first night on the Dark Fortress._

 

She’s doing a question and answer session on social media when someone sends in, “What did you want to be when you were younger?”

Her first thought is that the question doesn’t imply a profession. Her second is that it doesn’t imply an age. She wants to type out, _I wanted to be a girl of sunlight and shadows._ Sunlight like TJ’s smile radiating out from every facet of his personality. Shadows like the ones Phantom blended in and out of so easily. Sunlight like the kind that glances off of Ashley's hair. Shadows like the ones Zhane will claim he doesn't live in.

She sends back, “I wanted to be happy.”

 

Another interview, this time with _two_ daytime hosts instead of one. How lucky of her.

“You were all just children when this started, with Rita. It couldn’t have been you five the whole time.”

“Tom, be fair,” the woman says with a smile, gesturing toward Cassie. “They were all still just children when they saved the world.”

The crowd cheers at this, but she can barely hear them.

_Children_ , Cassie thinks. _We were all just children_. She tries to remember what it was like to be thirteen and not know that aliens were real, but somehow can’t picture it. She can’t remember the last time she felt like a child.

 

It’s a fundraiser for a charity that TJ is really adamant about but Cassie can’t remember the name of when she first sees Justin drink alcohol. It’s not as weird as she imagined it, watching him sip champagne across the room.

She manages to isolate him later and replace the champagne flute in his hand for a mixed drink from the bar. He looks at her, surprised. “You’re letting me drink?”

“You turned twenty-one four months ago,” she reminds him.

“Yeah but—”

“You’re spending too much time with Turbo One,” she chides. His gaze cuts sharply around them, but no one is paying attention. Besides, no one would know what that meant. “They make you feel like a child,” she continues.

He rolls his eyes and takes a sip. “No they don’t. They just make me feel…younger than them.”

“So, like a child,” she says.

He shakes his head. “It’s different. Feeling younger and feeling like a child is different.”

She looks at him for a long time. “Have you ever felt like a kid?”

He shrugs. “Maybe once. Before my mom died.” He quite suddenly sees someone he wants to speak with and his money-raising smile slides into place as he excuses himself.

Her dress feels a little too pink.

 

She’s going to a party, so she puts on heels and a sparkling dress and wants to laugh. Because the dress feels just as tight as her spandex, which is an absurd comparison to make. But maybe they’re both battle gear. She hasn’t decided yet.

If she’s honest with herself, she misses the stretch of her uniform. Misses the feel of her Satellite Stunner resting in her hands, the sweat from training, the euphoria of winning. _Of killing_ , a voice somewhere in the back of her mind reminds her, but she dismisses that thought. She can’t think of it like that because she enjoyed it too much. Was addicted to the feeling of it.

Addicted to fighting and adrenaline and smoke and fire and nothing will ever compare. Maybe that’s why she never falls in love. What’s the excitement of love compared to the thrill of being a ranger? So many questions, yet no motivation to discover the answers.

So what if she found a monster that could be good once? She’s also found heroes that could be bad. Good and bad, right and wrong; she’s starting to realize that none of it much matters to her. What matters is this: _blow up the monster or you’ll die._

It’s too easy to go back when Andros goes MIA and Alpha calls them.

Maybe once she did this for others; maybe once she donned the Turbo uniform for Kat’s sake, for TJ’s sake, for the world’s sake. But now? Now she wears the uniform of a dead girl and kills things because it’s all that she knows how to do.

_Soldier_ , her blood sings, because what else could she be?

 

Was it an interview or a talk show? Was there an audience? Details escape her, but the question struck true. “What did you want to be when you were little?”

“I never really planned on growing up,” she says, and they must have laughed because she does too.

“And, of course, you _have_ retained that heart of child.”

Was that what she meant? Part of her, most of her, all of her never planned past being a ranger. And maybe part of her, most of her, (all of her) never planned on ever stepping off the Megaship.

But here she was. All grown up, sweet sixteen and never been kissed, half in love with half her teammates, too lucky to know what to do with herself, smiling too brightly at lights that are too bright. With her heels sounding like miniature explosions on the marble, her mind already strategizing how to take down the enemies cloaked in suits too tight for them. It’s here that she can finally stomach the thought.

Addicts have recovery programs, right? Well, this is how hers goes.

It’s talking at length about being a ranger with a complete stranger without feeling sick, in an interview without clenching her teeth, to her teammates without regret. It’s remembering to send Ashley and Andros an anniversary gift without feeling jealous. It’s road trips with Zhane and Carlos that don’t quite have a set destination. It’s wearing a purple dress to Justin’s engagement party. It’s standing in a quarry that used to feel bigger, broader, more important, wearing the uniform she survived a war in, with TJ at her side and Karone dressed in pink. It’s forgetting to look around for a grey uniform with a red ruby, not because she doesn’t care, but because she stopped checking her closet for ghosts long ago.

It’s standing at this fundraiser, feeling comfortable in her own skin for the first time in a long time.

_I’m a soldier_ , she thinks. _And this is my battlefield now._


End file.
